Meet Biota Hawaii's Bri

Meet Bri, Biota Hawaiʻi’s Larviculture Specialist. Bri is the mastermind behind our copepod production, carefully raising eggs and nauplii into thriving adults that are essential to feeding young fish in our hatchery. From her first experiences breeding tilapia in aquaponics systems to presenting crayfish research at national conferences, to years of helping customers with freshwater and saltwater tanks, Bri has built a career rooted in both science and hands on care. Her meticulous protocols, dedication to improvement, and drive to make aquaculture more sustainable reflect her commitment to Mālama i ke kai, caring for the ocean. Whether she’s raising copepods, admiring a tank of baby tangs, or spending time with her many animals at home, Bri brings a genuine passion for aquaculture that makes a real difference in the future of ocean friendly fishkeeping.

What is your job title and what do you do at Biota?

Job Title: Larviculture Specialist I’m mainly in charge of copepod maturation and production at Biota Hawaiʻi. I'm responsible for maturing copepod eggs and nauplii into adults. The adults are used to sustain proper densities in eggs and nauplii production tanks. The copepod eggs and nauplii are used to feed larvae in our hatchery and stocking our maturation tanks.

What is your aquaculture education and/or experience?

My experience in aquaculture dates back to high school, I was in the natural resources pathway at Waipahu High School and was introduced to breeding and caring for freshwater tilapia for different types of aquaponics systems.

(https://www.ctahr.hawaii.edu/site/e-notes/08_27_2013.html scroll to “Tilapia sex”)

(https://www.hawaiipublicradio.org/government-politics/2014-03-31/education-secretary visits-waipahu-high-school scroll to Picture 2)

My agriculture advisor (shoutout! Mr. Garvey) organized a partnership with local elementary schools to teach students and teachers about setting up and caring for an aquaponics system. I was in charge of communicating with teachers for water quality readings and fine tuning their systems.

(https://youtu.be/KE0ZNZ8lMAU?si=ofnZiaCNfdq-kkiH )

After graduating high school I became interested in marine biology but I didn't know what to focus on. I attended Leeward Community College and eventually found an Intro to Aquaponics class and eventually TA’d for this class for 5 years (shoutout! Dr. Alyssa MacDonald). In this class we trapped and removed invasive crayfish from a local Loʻi (taro patch) and used them in the system instead of tilapia (we couldn't use tilapia because of iacuc). While caring for the crayfish they eventually started breeding in the tubs that they lived in and this solidified my interest in the “fish” part of aquaponics. I also did a feed trial on these crayfish during one semester and with research my lab partner and I did a poster presentation at the Annual Biomedical Research Conference for Minority Students (ABRCMS) in Anaheim, CA in 2019.

While attending college I worked at a local mom and pop pet store (shoutout! The Pet Depot in Ewa Beach). This is where I gained more knowledge about setting up and taking care of saltwater and freshwater tanks. This is where I became more interested in the nitty gritty of breeding and taking care of different freshwater fish. Nothing crazy, stuff like cichlids, crayfish, plecos, shrimp, etc. After talking with different customers and coworkers I eventually took the dive into setting a saltwater tank amongst my other freshwater tanks.

Can you tell us what made you choose aquaculture as a passion and career?

My first introduction to commercial aquaculture as a career was in high school. We took a field trip for FFA (Future Farmers of America) to Hawaiʻi Island and we went to the Kona side of the Island to visit an Abalone farm. I’ve never seen an abalone before let alone a HUGE hatchery set up like that. This peaked my interest a bit but at the time I saw it as boring because they were snails hanging out on structures. Years and years later, in college I attended a conference trip to Hawaiʻi Island and we went to a kanpachi fish farm in Kona. We looked at these HUGE tanks that had these HUGE fish in them. There was an entire team caring for these huge fish and expressed the importance of what they're doing. This opened my eyes to focus on a career in aquaculture because I’ve seen people in the field actually do it. Aquaculture and the importance of it has always been on my mind since then and that trip was in 2018. In that same year, I visited my family on Kauaʻi Island and my uncle who worked as a maintenance guy for Kauaʻi Shrimp gave my dad and I a tour of the facility. He showed us the shrimp ponds and the raceways of different aged shrimp. This opened my eyes even more to this being a career.

After working many years in pet store retail (shout out the pet depot), I've seen the highs and lows of keeping saltwater fish in stock. In Hawaiʻi (before the pandemic) divers were allowed to collect different local fish and different local inverts (cleaner shrimp, hermits, anemones, zoanthids) for retail (I'm not too sure what the limits were). I've seen articles every so often of divers on Hawaiʻi Island getting in trouble for taking too much fish for retail or for personal use. I also have seen my boss order different types of saltwater fish from different sources: Sustainable Aquatics, Christmas Island, Philippines, etc (we couldnʻt order any inverts because of the law). Around when the pandemic hit, Hawaiʻi banned the collection of fish and inverts for retail and some places were not able to ship fish into Hawaiʻi. This is where I was introduced to captive bred ornamental fish. I always had an idea of aquaculture but I was only exposed to food aquaculture and not ornamental aquaculture.

The thing that made me choose aquaculture to be my passion and career was to make a positive impact on the environment. At the time I didn't know if I wanted to work with food or ornamental fish. I knew my interest was always going to be some sort of fish farming because you can easily see fish growth in months time, raising different inverts always peaked my interest too but I always loved fish. In Hawaiʻi we have a saying: Mālama i ke kai, take care of the ocean or protect the ocean. Whenever local articles of overfishing or over collecting come up, it rocks the community because (being born and raised in Hawaiʻi) everyone knows “take only what you and your family needs”. Whenever my family and I go fishing we only fish what we need and we leave the rest. By overfishing or over collecting fish or inverts it would throw that whole area into a spiral. Going back to making a positive impact on the environment, A career in aquaculture is very beneficial for the environment because it steers people away from collecting fish and inverts out of their natural environment, yes it may cost a pretty penny but it would be worth it in the long run.

Even if I'm not in the hatchery directly working with the larval tanks, my role with the copepods is still important because without the copepod eggs and nauplii we aren't able to feed the larval fish during the early stages of their lives. When I do look into the larval tanks it’s very rewarding to watch the eggs we stock grow up into shippable sized fish. It’s also rewarding to know what we’re doing at work making a difference in the aquarium trade industry. It’s neat to see videos of fish that we raise in home aquariums on social media. It’s rewarding to protect the ocean from being robbed of its fish. It’s SUPER cool to have customers from my old pet store job to ask me how they can get their hands on some of the fish we raise. It’s very cool to learn what it takes to raise these fish from egg to shippable size because (after working in the pet store industry) all I knew about these fish was how to take care of their adult stage of life.

What are some of your favorite fish species you culture in Hawaii?

I can’t say which species I favor here because I like them all! It’s cool to see the cleaner wrasse, the raccoon butterflies and the potters in the hatchery because it was something different. One of the fish I have a soft spot for is the blue hippo tang. It's been awhile since we stocked the eggs but the story of why I have a soft spot for them is pretty cool. When I first got hired at Biota Hawaiʻi the first tank that I've seen grow from egg to color to shipping size was blue hippo tangs. Being a newbie in this job this is the tank where I learned the feeding protocol from the very beginning to the end. I do hope that we can get back into producing blue hippo tangs without blemishes. I will always have a soft spot for our yellow tangs because that's the species that put us on the map.

 What career successes are you most proud of?

I'm most proud of improving the copepods systems and its protocols. When I found my niche in copepod raising there was a written protocol for the copepod counting that I learned from, but a lot has changed since it was typed up so I decided to take the time to update the copepod counting protocol. When I was training to be a copepod person I always had questions of the differences between this calculation and that calculation and what is the purpose of this number. In my lab experience the written protocol would answer these questions but it didn’t. I was confused and I always had to ask my coworker if what I was doing was correct. I took these questions into consideration when I rewrote the copepod counting protocol. On each page I included the type of count, a purpose for the calculation, and an example of how to do the math to get to the final calculation. The protocol that I typed out also included different situations that you could be caught in when adjusting the densities/population of the egg and nauplii production tanks. I didn’t have that when I was training so I made sure to include it.

Not only did I retype the counting copepods protocol but I typed up a protocol for every copepod system. When I was learning each copepod system (maturation tanks, production tanks, harvesting e/n) I was always writing down a step by step list so I can always refer to it if I get stuck. Since I was overwhelmed with all the information during mytraining, I wanted to type up a step by step list on each system to help guide any new employees with their training.

Another big accomplishment that I'm proud of was getting the eggs and nauplii production system on a proper density adjusting schedule. When I was first introduced to this system there wasn't a set schedule of water changes, partial drains or drain and restocks. This led to bad eggs and nauplii production numbers because each tank wasn’t getting their density/population adjusted or turned over. Bad eggs and nauplii numbers = starving larval fish. Once I set a schedule for the system, the production for eggs and nauplii went up and each larval tank was being well fed.

The last accomplishment that I’m proud of was making a new tank feeding sheet to match our new feeding protocol. Our hatchery feeding protocols changed ever since I got hired and the sheets that we print for every tank didn’t reflect the new hatchery feeding protocol. I took the time to email myself our old feeding protocol and used it as a template on my ipad to make the new feed protocol. We couldn’t edit on the work desktop because the sheet was made in the mac app “numbers” and we don't have an mac desktop at work. It was good to have the new tank sheets reflect the new feeding protocol to make sure every one was on the same page.

The next thing that I'm working on is using cylinders as copepod maturation grow out tanks. I want to figure out the nitty gritty of growing them in this type of tank because the tubes use less space and less resources compared to huge tanks. More adult copepods being produced is way way way better than not having enough. Eventually I want to work on running this tube copepod grow out/production using paste algae instead of live algae because algae is always a limiting factor here. Then eventually maybe running an eggs and nauplii production tank with algae paste.

What species do you dream of breeding in the future?

There are many different species I dream of breeding like any type of goby, dartfish, dottybacks and pufferfish. I always liked seeing the different types of dartfish or firefish, myfavorite will always be the Helfrichi firefish. I had one in my saltwater tank but it ended up jumping out of my tank, unfortunately I didn’t have a cover on my tank because I had to order a custom one through the mail. The coloration on any of the dartfish/firefish is super vibrant and it's super cool when they flick their fin up and down. Dottybacks are super cool in color and my favorites are the neon, orchid and the indigo dottybacks. I always had dottybacks in my saltwater tanks to take care of any bristle worms in my tank and over all they look really cool when they dart around the tank.

I always had a soft spot for any pufferfish because I would always see them in different sizes when fishing. Pufferfish always have a nice smile on their face and their eyes give them the impression like they’re thinking about something.

Another thing that I do dream of breeding is different kinds of inverts. It’s impossible to do at the Hawaiʻi facility but I always found it cool to see videos online of facilities that grow LPS corals/soft corals. I know our North Carolina facility breeds different types of shrimp which I always found to be super cool. I had a friend that had harlequin shrimp spawn in her home aquarium but she wasn't successful in raising the larvae. I would like to learn how to breed starfish, urchins, clams, oysters, even seahorses. There's alot of different species that I want to see grow from egg to juvenile.

When you’re not breeding fish, what do you like to do?

If I'm not at work I'm taking care of my many animals that I have at home! I have cats, dogs, chickens, ducks, tortoises, turtles. Among all those animals I'm taking care of my many fish tanks. Sometimes I'm gaming online with my cousins. Sometimes I'm out gallivanting with friends. Most times I'm chilling with my family and loved ones at home.

Do you spend much time in the water?

Usually I’m at the beach during summer. My favorite beaches are all on the west side because we stay at the beach longer to watch the sunset and I live on that side of the island.